Video Transcript
The Bail Project, TBP in the house! All the way from 11 different cities all over the country coming here to Los Angeles to rock the mic, get people free.
Hey everybody! I’m Amber from St. Louis office, and here just at the convening 2019 for The Bail Project. Just hanging out with y’all learning, training, workshopping, building some community. It’s awesome. Can’t wait for the rest of the week!
Hey everybody I’m Shakela from the St. Louis office here in L.A. I think I might move cause it looks real nice compared to that negative degrees in St. Louis.
I’m Angel Tomeo Sam. I am from Spokane, Washington, the newest site with The Bail Project. I’m just really excited to be here to see faces to names to emails and to just really see this collaborative effort to reduce jail populations. We saw that cash bail’s a bigger issue than what we thought. We saw that cash bail doesn’t just end with state charges or criminal charges but it’s also predatory ticketing, right. There’s a whole thing that capitalism has built for us that’s built off money. The system is built off money. We all know that when people miss court it’s really never because they just didn’t feel like going. They couldn’t find a babysitter, they had car problems, there’s addiction problems, there’s depression. So there’s all these things that are going on that once you pay bail, for some clients you just gotta remind them and that’s all it is. Other clients there’s other resources that are needed to give them the same fighting chance that we want for all our clients.
One of the things that I find super important is to say here’s the resource, give them a call, call me back after you do that let me know what happened. Letting people know they can do it themselves and encouraging them and just guiding them on how. I put this thing we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for because that’s how I operate. What can I do, how can I do it, and where can I do it. And a lot of people we meet doing our Bail Project work they want to know how they can use their energy so being connected to local grassroots movements is a way to take action to use that energy.
I’ve been excited about this trip and getting together with all, I call them all my coworkers. Even though we’re all in different sites in different cities these are my coworkers. We’re doing something new, right. This is new work. We’re still in learning curves for some of it and so I think that us coming together is a really big deal and it shows how much we’ve grown, it shows how much we want to work together, and we can trade best practices.
There’s so much that we can develop and build out. I’m happy to be here to… bring it!
The Bail Project employs over 100 people, all scattered throughout the country. In 2019, we gathered together for the first time in Los Angeles to mark our anniversary. We shared personal stories, spoke about what drives us to do our work, and discussed our visions for a future where everyone’s dignity and humanity are respected. Watch the video above to learn more about The Bail Project and what we did at our first convening.
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